Color Wheels

A color wheel is an illustrative organization of colors around a circle, showing the relationships between primary colors, secondary colors, and tertiary colors.

Color Wheel

Three Important Color Wheels

How many ways can you rearrange the rainbow?

RGB

Red, Green, Blue

CMY

Cyan, Magenta, Yellow

RYB

Red, Yellow, Blue

The RGB Color Wheel

The RGB (Red, Green, Blue) color wheel represents the 3 light sources used to produce colors on a TV or computer screen.

Primary colors are Red, Green, and Blue.

Secondary colors are created by mixing primary colors:

Red and Green= Yellow
Green and Blue = Cyan
Blue and Red = Magenta

The 12 Main Colors of RGB:

RED #FF0000 (255,0,0)	#FF8000 (255,128,0)	YELLOW #FFFF00 (255,255,0)	#80FF00 (128,255,0)	GREEN #00FF00 (0,255,0)	#00FF80 (0,255,80)
CYAN #00FFFF (0,255,255)	#0080FF (0,128,255)	BLUE #0000FF (0,0,255)	#8000FF (128,00,255)	MAGENTA #FF00FF (255,0,255)	#FF0080 (255,0,128)

RGB Green is different from the HTML color named Green.

The CMY(K) Color Wheel

The CMY(K) (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) represent the colors used to print on paper.

The primary colors are Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow.

Secondary colors are created by mixing primary colors:

Cyan and Magenta = Blue
Magenta and Yellow = Red
Yellow and Cyan = Green.

The 12 Main Colors of CYM:

CYAN #00FFFF (0,255,255)	#0080FF (0,128,255)	BLUE #0000FF (0,0,255)	#8000FF (128,00,255)	MAGENTA #FF00FF (255,0,255)	#FF0080 (255,0,128)
RED #FF0000 (255,0,0)	#FF8000 (255,128,0)	YELLOW #FFFF00 (255,255,0)	#80FF00 (128,255,0)	GREEN #00FF00 (0,255,0)	#00FF80 (0,255,80)

The RYB Color Wheel

The RYB (Red, Yellow, Blue) color wheel is used by painters, artists and designers for blending pigment colors.

The 3 primary colors are Red, Yellow, and Blue.

Secondary colors are created by mixing primary colors.

The 3 secondary colors are Orange, Green, and Purple.

Red and Yellow = Orange
Yellow and Blue = Green
Blue and Red = Purple.

The tertiary colors are made by mixing two secondary colors.

The 6 tertiary colors are Red-Orange, Yellow-Orange, Yellow-Green, Blue-Green, Blue-Purple, Red-Purple

The 12 Main Colors of RYB:

RED #FE2712	R-O #FC600A	ORANGE #FB9902	Y-O #FCCC1A	YELLOW #FEFE33	Y-G #B2D732
GREEN #66B032	B-G #347C98	BLUE #0247FE	B-P #4424D6	PURPLE #8601AF	R-P #C21460

RYB is the best color wheel to identify the colors that go well together.

The RYB wheel can be used to create pleasing color schemes for the web.

You can learn more about color schemes in the chapter of Color Schemes.

You can learn more about color psychology in the chapter of Color Psychology.